Help! is the Beatles' all-out try at carving a new career as a screen team before their long love affair with the squealers dies out. As such, it is a failure, for as actors they are still nothing but Beatles, without enough characterization—or even caricaturization—to play anything but sight gags.
But the production is something else again. The charm and experimental spontaneity of A Hard Day's Night has here been replaced by highly professional, carefully calculated camera work and cutting, plus a story line made out of finely wrought jack-in-the-boxes.
Here the Beatles are pursued by a band of bloodthirsty Orientals bent...
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